


we didn't start the fire (it lived in us)

by blackranger (robpatFF)



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Post Season 2 Fix-It, Season 2 canon compliant, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, adora would burn down the world for catra, catra and entrapta are Friends, catra: a character study, depictions of torture, discussions of growing up in the Horde, that's canon, you can leave the horde but the horde doesn't leave you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robpatFF/pseuds/blackranger
Summary: Here, at the very end of things, she will not scream.The green buzzing, fiery thing leaves her in a type of stasis. Her feet don't touch the ground. Her arms are held out wide and away from her body. It makes her shoulders hurt. It makes everything hurt. There's a little ball of it, like a high-voltage gag, that holds her mouth open. There is spit and drool on Catra's chin and at the sides of her mouth. That scream, that one that begs to be let out, would not be heard by anyone. It would echo behind the pain shoved into her mouth, this green piece of shit that makes her tongue bleed and her gums swell.Fuck Hordak.Fuck Shadow Weaver.Fuckthis.





	we didn't start the fire (it lived in us)

**Author's Note:**

> Binged She-Ra in two days and then wrote this. I love Catra. I could write one million words about Catra. Here's a few thousand following the end of season 2. If you haven't watched yet, here's your warning for spoilers.

Catra is tired.

It's not the kind that can be fixed with sleep or rest. It's not the kind that can be swayed with promises of a bed that feels like bricks but is hers or a moment, just a goddamn moment, of letting herself be held in Scorpia's claws.

This kind of tired aches down to her very bones.

Hordak was a good teacher to Shadow Weaver. Now, at the very end of things, Catra understands where her—

(What is Shadow Weaver? Her mentor? Her commander? Her caregiver?

Her _death_?)

penchant for long, arduous torture came from. Hordak's twisted nebula of electricity and magic feels like fire on her skin, but it leaves no burns. It stings, like the zap of one of the Horde's blasting guns, over and over and over. It leaves her teeth chattering and a scream built in the hollow of her lungs that she will not set free. She will not scream.

Here, at the very end of things, she will not scream.

The green buzzing, fiery thing leaves her in a type of stasis. Her feet don't touch the ground. Her arms are held out wide and away from her body. It makes her shoulders hurt. It makes everything hurt. There's a little ball of it, like a high-voltage gag, that holds her mouth open. There is spit and drool on Catra's chin and at the sides of her mouth. That scream, that one that begs to be let out, would not be heard by anyone. It would echo behind the pain shoved into her mouth, this green piece of shit that makes her tongue bleed and her gums swell.

Fuck Hordak.

Fuck Shadow Weaver.

Fuck _this_.

The little dead-eyed flying spy hovers into her line of sight. It stares at her; those blank yellow eyes look inside her. Catra wonders what the thing sees. Maybe pain. Maybe spite. Maybe anger.

She has a lot of that. She has _so much_ of that.

"What do you want?" she tries to say.

It is mumbled, like someone put a hand over her mouth. Like Adora used to do, back when Adora was here. Like when they snuck out and on the way back in Catra, loud and pumped up on adrenaline, would have a hand shoved over her mouth in the middle of her words. She bit at Adora. She sunk her fangs into the meat of her palm and Adora, _perfect Adora_ , took it all.

"Adora," Shadow Weaver would drawl, in that spine-chilling way she had. Adora, she said, like it was not a name, but a proclamation. Like Adora was not a person, but a concept. A piece on a playing board. "Adora, what are you doing out of the barracks after hours?"

Catra froze, stiff and swallowing down a type of fear only Shadow Weaver could induce.

"Shadow Weaver," Adora said, brisk and respectful. She moved away, so far away, and left Catra to hold her breath and push herself flat against the wall. "I thought I heard something, so I went to check. I apologize for breaking Cadet orders. It won't happen again."

There was quiet. With Shadow Weaver came an unnatural and dark stillness. Even the tendrils of her power moved without sound. They slithered down her legs and across the floor now, searching.

"Is Catra with you?" Shadow Weaver asked, voice too-sweet and almost melodious. It made Catra sick to hear. It made Catra want it directed at her. She deserved sweet. She deserved a voice that could sound like a song when it whispered to someone it liked. "I know how you try to protect her, my Adora."

"No, Shadow Weaver," Adora said, would always say. _No, Shadow Weaver_ , in the moments that did not matter in the long run but mattered in the moment. "It's just me."

Catra pressed her lips together and held flat to the wall. Not even a breath would eek out of her.

So when she tries to talk to Hordak's little spying, flying creature, it sounds like that. Mumbled and muffled, but there is no protective hand covering her mouth. There is just a ball of green sparks, biting at her tongue.

"What do you want?" she tries to ask, and the little things opens its mouth like it's on the cusp of a blood-curdling scream.

"I lost Shadow Weaver," comes from the black abyss of its mouth. It is Catra's voice it plays. It is Catra's fear. It is Catra's desperation it repeats on a feedback loop. "I have to find her before Hordak knows anything is wrong." Its head tilts. _That is you_ , it seems to say.

It plays the recording over and over and over again until the very sound of her own voice grates on Catra's ears. "Enough!" she tries to scream. "Enough! Shut up, shut up, shut _up_!"

None of the words come out right. The green, buzzing gag stings her tongue. There is spit and drool and maybe even blood at the corners of her mouth and on her chin.

It plays the recording over and over and over while Catra thrashes, and the pain from the magical, scientific, god-awful stasis hold Hordak has her in nearly pushes her to unconsciousness.

Catra thrashes as if that will free her from this electric prison.

Her voice echoes in the room.

She does not scream.

\-----

Catra is not sure if she sleeps. All she knows is that one moment she is awake and everything hurts, and the next moment the entire world is black. The pain permeates, even in the—maybe they're dreams. The pain follows her down to visions of long practice hours and whole nights spending standing in the corner of Shadow Weaver's room, a sharp _eyes open_ carrying the weight of a slap every time her eyes slipped close in exhaustion. The pain drifts with her down to memories of blonde hair and big eyes and _come with me, Catra. Come with me._

The pain follows down to when Catra could crumple up her hurt and betrayal as small as she could make it and tuck it away. Small enough that Scorpia could ask, "Are you okay?" and Catra could roll her eyes and says, "Don't I look okay? What a stupid question," and they could laugh.

Scorpia was good at making her laugh.

So she meanders through these dreams or visions or memories, and maybe it's sleep and maybe it's not, but she jolts into full awareness when she realizes bright red eyes are peering at her.

Entrapta. 

Entrapta lifts her goggles up. "Fascinating," she says. "I thought maybe you were dead. You didn't respond for a long time."

Catra blinks, taking in the purple-haired girl in front of her. Entrapta looks back. She is real, then. She is not a vision or a dream or a memory.

Catra bares her teeth. "Not dead yet," she mumbles, fangs digging into the little buzzing gag. It sends shockwaves through her teeth and skull.

She does not scream.

She will not scream.

The electric shocks cease, and Catra is left trembling and shaking.

"That looks painful," Entrapta says. "Is it?" She doesn't give Catra time to answer, not that Catra would. She will not admit to this Princess that she feels each electric shock in her blood. She will not admit that she wants to scream, and she wants to cry, and she wants someone to make it stop.

Catra can't move her head, so she can only listen as Entrapta fiddles around in the room that is now a prison. She hears whirring and buzzing and the little off-pitch hum Entrapta does while she works. It's a weird hum, because Entrapta is a weird Princess, but it has become familiar to Catra. Entrapta has become familiar to Catra, because Entrapta is strange, and she is too smart, and she never quits, and Entrapta—

stayed.

She stayed, and she stays now, humming a little tune as Catra tries to make the pain turn to white noise.

“Interesting,” Entrapta says after long minutes of nothing but Catra’s forced silence and a meandering, strange humming. “If I override the magnetic resistance here, and lessen the frequency of the waves here, I should be able to turn this off and—"

“No,” Catra says, firm as she can. She swallows and tries again. “No.” The word is muffled, but there is no mistake in it.

Entrapta somersaults over and sits cross-legged on top her pigtails. Her goggles are still on, so all Catra can see is peculiar, glowing red eyes. “Fascinating,” Entrapta says again. “Tell me why! Is this another social experiment? I need data!”

Catra stares at her. It takes a lot of energy to lift her head, but she won’t show it. She lifts it up until her flat ears and her tangled hair are on display. “No,” is all she can say with the ball of buzzing electricity between her teeth.

“Oh,” Entrapta says. A tendril of hair reaches out and taps a code into the pin pad of the machine that keeps Catra held here. A few beeps, a few clicks, and suddenly the pressure in her mouth is gone, and her jaw clicks and trembles with pain as she tries to close it. “Sorry, should have done that before. A scientist can’t get data if the subject can’t communicate. It’s, like, Experiments 101.”

Entrapta clicks on her recorder and holds it out. “Why don’t you want me to turn off Hordak’s electrical stasis machine?”

Catra swallows. Her mouth feels sore. She doesn’t think her jaw is closing all the way. Her tongue feels heavy and swollen.

She holds her head up high. To do anything else in the Horde is to die.

She is not dead yet.

“You have to keep me like this,” Catra says. Her voice scratches from disuse. It hurts to talk. “Hordak can’t know you helped me.” She chokes on a gasp and darts her eyes around the room. “That thing, his _thing_ —"

“Oh, his spy?” Entrapta asks. “Looks like a flying baby? I’m doing an experiment with it.”

“Experiment?” Catra repeats. Words feel strange in her mouth. She could scream now, if she wanted.

She wants.

“Yes!” Entrapta yells, bouncing on her hair. “It’s currently in the vents listening to my hologram discuss Hordak’s portal! I didn’t know if it would work, but—" Her arms spread wide. “It did, Catra. With time maybe I could even—"

“You can’t turn the machine off,” Catra cuts in. “Promise me.”

She made Entrapta promise before. She had steel in her voice and iron in her tone and she said, “Promise me,” and Entrapta did.

Then she ended up working under Hordak’s watchful eye. Promises with Entrapta don’t hold much weight, but this one will. Catra will accept nothing else.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks.

Entrapta nods and holds the recorder close. She leans in so close that Catra can see the very faint freckles on her skin and smell the sweet tiny food she stores in her pocket. She is close enough that Catra can see her eyes, big and wide and waiting, behind her goggles.

“If you turn the machine off,” Catra says slowly, carefully, purposely, “Hordak will know, and he will kill us both.”

Entrapta blinks. “But—"

“Promise me,” Catra says. The way she and Adora used to whisper promises in the dark. They would last, she thought, promises forged in the shadows. “Entrapta, you swear it.”

The girl in front of her stares for a very long time. “If you stay like this long enough, you’ll die,” she says, like she is presenting Catra with simple facts. “The machine will kill you.”

Catra hisses, snapping her fangs. “Then it’ll kill _me_ ,” she says. “You stay out of it.”

“But no one else finds me First Ones tech as fast as you do,” Entrapta says, wringing her hands together. “No one else listens to my theories like you. Except Hordak. That’s different, though.”

Catra lets out a wet, bitter laugh. “It is different,” she says. “Hordak probably wouldn’t let you go digging in the middle of the ice and unleash evil giant worms, either.”

“That was fun,” Entrapta says, bouncing. “If you die, how will we have fun?”

Catra didn’t know anything with the Horde could be classified as fun. It was just her life. Dark and full of shadows and one day she would rule it all. She could build it up or burn it down.

That wouldn’t happen now.

“Promise me, Princess,” she says again. Words are so hard. Keeping her head up is hard. The Horde taught her how to be hard.

Maybe it’s all she knows now.

“I promise,” Entrapta says, and Catra opens her mouth, waiting.

The ball of electricity starts back up between her teeth, and she chokes back a scream.

\-----

It is hard to tell time in this place. This place being the room where she is being held. This place being her own wavering mind. This place being the Fright Zone, filled with the stench of repressed fear and sweat from night terrors and silent screams, held up by Shadow Weaver's tendrils around your neck.

"Day, um, day I'm not sure," Entrapta says into her recorder. "I spent so long programming a more complex hologram to occupy Hordak's flying baby that I lost track of time." She peers at Catra. "What day is it?"

Catra closes her eyes so she doesn't roll them. Her stomach is hollow, her throat is hollow. She has no words, but Entrapta asks for them anyway.

"Been kinda busy being tortured," she manages. When Entrapta comes, Catra's jaw can crack and stretch and move. "All the days are shit."

"A valid observation," Entrapta says absently, staring at a small computer screen in her hands. A long purple hair tendril crawls the floor and holds up a tiny cupcake. "Tiny food?"

It's hard to chew, but Catra does it. It doesn't taste like anything but blood and rust. Delicious.

She shudders as she forces it down. "How's Scorpia?" she asks. She meant to ask yesterday, or maybe it was the day before. Some days she can talk to Entrapta, and some days she spends hours on the brink of begging her to _turn it off, turn it off, let him kill me._

Some days are better than others. Today is a better day, and she finds the energy to ask about Scorpia. She will never admit it, not even here at the edge of death, but she misses the warmth. She misses Scorpia's kindness. It is weak and naive and one day it will get Scorpia killed, but Catra misses it so fiercely it feels tangible. It feels like a thing she can ask Entrapta to sneak in here.

"Is she in charge now?"

Entrapta freezes, fingers curled tight around her tiny computer. She does all her work directly in front of Catra, so Catra does not have to keep asking what she's doing when she's out of sight. She sits right in front, so Catra can see the way she freezes, and Catra freezes, too.

"Tell me," she demands. Her claws come out, a fight response she's unable to control here. "What happened? What did Hordak do to Scorpia?"

Entrapta pulls on her hair. "I can't tell," she whines. "Scorpia said it was a secret." She looks pleadingly at Catra. "She made me promise. You said I have to keep promises. You said that's what friends do."

"There are no friends in the Fright Zone," Catra spits. The anger builds and builds inside her like a trembling, dangerous thing. "She's doing something stupid."

"Define your parameters of stupid," Entrapta says, and Catra refuses to speak to her for the rest of the day.

\-----

Catra is shivering.

She is cold and hot and angry and sad. She can't feel her fingers or her toes. The ache in her shoulders has turned numb. The electricity doesn't feel like anything special now. It just burns. The scream remains lodged in her throat. No one would hear it.

Trembling, shaking, sweating, she wonders if anyone would care.

"I care," Scorpia told her once. But Scorpia's not here.

"I care," Adora whispered in the dark, their fingers tangled in promise. "I care about you."

"That's gross," Catra told her. "Don't let anyone else hear you embarrass yourself like that."

Adora smiled, and Catra thought, _one day this wretched kingdom will be ours to build or burn_.

But Adora's not here.

Adora's not—

Someone wipes sweat off her forehead. Her hair sticks to her face and neck. She is hot and cold. She is dying, most likely, and someone is wiping sweat off her forehead.

"Adora?" she mumbles, through the horrible thing between her teeth.

"Subject appears to be hallucinating," Entrapta whispers into her recorder. "She thinks I'm Adora." She leans in close, and Catra struggles to focus. "Do you think I can turn into the She-Ra, too? I'm curious to know how deep these delusions go."

Entrapta presses her magic button and Catra's tongue is freed from its electric prison. "Entrapta," she murmurs, eyelids fluttering.

"Oh, you do know who I am. That's fantastic. Yes?"

Catra is tired. She is shivering. She is dying.

"Shut up, please," she says. "I want another tiny cupcake. The pink ones."

She is not quite dead yet.

\-----

The strangest day of all comes.

Entrapta has not come today. Catra has learned to tell time by the clink of a vent opening and watching her slither out. Without that, Catra feels lost.

She thought at least Entrapta would stay. They were friends. Entrapta said they were friends.

Entrapta is not here.

There is just Catra and her pain. She is used to that. It is familiar to her. Pain is consistent. Pain is steady. Pain does not leave; Hordak makes sure of that.

Catra closes her eyes and lets her head bow. There is no one, not even Hordak's hovering, flying, terrible thing, to see her. There is no room for it here now. There is just room for Catra, a space she has made all her own. This is what she wanted. For Hordak to see her. To prove herself. So, here she is. She is proving herself. She will not give in. She will not scream. Hordak will have to ply information from within her with his own twisted fingers.

She will not scream, and yet, there is screaming.

One of her ears twitches. She smells burning, and for one long moment, she thinks this terrible machine is finally flaying her flesh. It is not her skin on fire though. There is screaming from outside these walls. There is the smell of burning, and the choked sounds of soldiers down, and the whoosh of metal. There is the sound of bodies hitting the floor.

The Horde, maybe even the entire Fright Zone, is burning. Catra is not.

The sounds of an army falling come closer. Catra holds her head up, because that is what the Horde has taught her to do. Whoever comes through here may kill her, but she will die with her head held high.

The door is kicked in, and it goes flying.

"I said I could open it," Entrapta says, blinking at the space where a door used to be. "I just needed a minute."

"I just needed a second, but thank you," Scorpia says kindly. She rushes forward, staggering to her knees in front of Catra. "Wildcat," she says fondly, stroking Catra's limp, disgusting hair. "I knew you wouldn't go down without a fight. I told them."

"Them?" she tries to ask, but the clink of metal is too loud and too sharp and too close. She cannot ask about _them_ , because here they are. Bow, and Glimmer, and the rest of the high and mighty Princesses. At the front of them, marred with blood and shaking with rage, is She-Ra.

Catra makes a noise she cannot describe and cannot control. Maybe its closest form is anguish. She makes a noise and watches She-Ra shrink and become a vision, a dream, a memory. There is no way that is Adora, streaked copper-red with blood and holding her sword with a trembling grip.

"Entrapta," Adora bites out. "Why is she still stuck in that—thing? Turn it off. Turn it _off_."

"Coming," Entrapta sings. She hums, a little tune that Catra hears in her sleep now, and does all the things Catra forbade her from doing before. "And one, two, three!" The machine powers down, and Catra falls, limbs too weak to hold her up.

Scorpia fusses over her, but Adora stays put. Stays still and unmoving. Catra is finally free to move and speak as she wishes, but she finds herself frozen under Adora's haunted gaze. It is not the Rebellion's Adora that stands in front of her now. This is not the soft Adora that slept in a tower Catra couldn't reach and walked into a destiny Catra couldn't follow.

This is the Adora that was spit out of the Horde's maw. This is the sharp, jagged Adora that did not cry and did not show weakness and did not put her sword down, even with people she trusted at her back. She was in the pit of the Horde; she was bred by the Horde. This was the Adora that was reminded of that, staring at Catra's weak, hunched form.

"Everyone out," she says, voice even.

The shiny one, Glimmer, protests. "Adora, you can't—"

"Out," Adora says again. It is a quiet command, and it sounds wrong coming from this girl. But Catra knows this girl. They promised, in the dark, they would either rule this place or burn it.

The Fright Zone burns. Adora is quiet, but she burns with rage. She stinks of it.

Catra wants to bury her face in it.

The group, all of them, even Scorpia and Entrapta, leave. Adora finally drops her sword and walks closer. She is wary and slow and careful. She watches Catra like she does not know which of them is predator and which of them is prey.

"Hey, Adora," Catra says. She finally lets her knees collapse beneath her, and she lies on the ground. It has been so long since she could do that. "Cat got your tongue?"

Adora lowers herself to the ground. It is like they are cadets again, staring up at the ceiling and wishing for things they don't yet know are called stars. They lie there, the two of them, with promises between them.

Adora stares at Catra. Perhaps she is seeing the lank, dirty hair. The tired, shaking limbs. The dried drool and spit and blood on her chin and on her teeth.

"What's the matter?" Catra asks. "She-Ra too good to see me suffer like this?"

Adora pushes up on one elbow. Her hair is ragged and scorched and hangs in her face. "She hasn't earned it," she says. "She-Ra hasn't earned the right to see you like this."

Catra laughs. It overtakes her lungs until she is coughing, hacking, choking on it. She spits, and there is blood. She bares her teeth at Adora, and there is blood. "And you have?"

"We promised we would either rule this place or burn it down," Adora says. "Look around, Catra. I burnt it all down."

Catra musters up the strength to drag a careful claw through the blood smeared on Adora's cheek. "We were supposed to do it together," she says. "You had all the fun by yourself."

Adora grabs her hand, and Catra does not pull away. "I watched Shadow Weaver burn," she says. "I listened to her screams until they were nothing but echoes. And then I stayed and listened to those, too." She pulls Catra's hand up to her mouth and kisses the raw skin of her knuckles. Catra shivers. "I saved Hordak for you."

"Wow," Catra says, "you really do love me."

"I do." Adora's mouth has blood on it. Maybe from Catra. Maybe from a body slain along the way. "I burned the entire world for you."

There is electricity in Adora's eyes. There is a simmering anger that sparks off her skin like its own magic. It does not scare Catra. They are born from the Horde, and they will stand over its ashes.

"Help me up," Catra says. "You took long enough. We got shit to do."

Adora helps her up. She says nothing of the fact that she has to hold all of Catra's weight. There is work to be finished. They promised, after all.

\-----

**Author's Note:**

> @ princesshobs on twitter


End file.
